Elysian

My name is Alice. 

    I stare down at the four words on the sheet of parchment I keep tucked under my pillow every night. The words are like eyes, staring at me, unblinking. I hold the parchment tightly, maybe too tightly, for it begins to wrinkle under my hold. 

    My name is Alice. 

    I thought if I wrote it down, and looked at it, and fell asleep with the words underneath my head, that it would help me remember. That I’d be able to remember myself as Alice, and not as Atonement. But now, as I stare down at those words, written with my lopsided cursive, I realize that all this time all I’ve been doing is trying to convince myself, persuade my mind that this was who I truly was. Alice. But I know now that as long as I’m here, I’m Atonement. 

   I crumple the paper up with my hands and stick it under my pillow, for all it’s worth.

    We always have what the nuns call “reflective time” before dinner. I know they want us to be praying, or flicking through our Bible and memorizing passages, but lately, all I’ve been doing is staring at the brick wall across from my bed. 

    I had hung up Mother’s letters on the wall with some tape Mercy had given me randomly one day. Mercy has an odd habit of doing that. Last Tuesday, as the nuns were taking us through the gardens, she slipped her hand into mine and gave me a handful of round, smooth buttons. All she did was shrug and walk away afterward, as I stood, dumbfounded. I told Prayer about it later, and she sighed. “You know how Mercy is. She’d do anything mischievous like that to give the nuns grief.”

    Anyways. I cannot think straight when I am in this room for too long. I had taped Mother’s letters to the wall. Just so I could fall asleep staring at her beautiful handwriting, at the perfect loops and curves of her letters, how she drew commas and dotted her i’s. It was as if she was standing over me and kissing my forehead goodnight. But of course, one of the nuns found her letters there and became upset. Luckily, it was Sister Edith, and she’s one of the kinder ones. 

   “Taping letters to walls is inappropriate, Atonement,” she had said gently as she peeled the letters off the walls, placing them inside a paper bag. “You should know better. You’re a smart girl.”

  I liked it when she called me smart. But I didn’t feel smart. For about eight months now, all I’ve felt like is a foolish little girl. 

    A knock at the front door pulled me from my thoughts. Sister Miriam walks into the room. She wrinkles her nose when she notices me sitting on my bed, motionless, my hands in my lap. 

“What were you doing?” she asks. Sister Miriam always spoke quickly and loudly. And she always has her nose wrinkled at you, as if you smell bad and it disgusts her. 

    “Praying.” I lie.

   “Your eyes were open.”

    “Is there a law that requires you to pray with your eyes closed?” I ask. I only notice the sarcasm in my tone after I said it. 

    She runs her tongue over her bottom lip slowly as she stares at me, like a wolf licking its chops. “Since you’re in the mood to behave rudely tonight, you should skip dinner.”

    I stood up slowly, looked up at her with supplication in my eyes. “I apologize for my behavior, Sister Miriam. I only feel very tired, and it’s making me irritable.” 

    I watch her facial expression. I watch the way she tightens her eyebrows, how her lips curl back, and I count the wrinkles on her nose. I also notice how she curled her fingers into her palms, but I know that she can’t hit me. Father Amos wouldn’t allow any of the nuns to strike us while we’re so heavily pregnant. 

    She finally opened her tightened mouth. “Come. And not another word out of you.”

    “Yes, Sister Miriam.”

 Outside, all the other girls are lined up. I see Mercy and Prayer standing next to each other. Prayer catches my eye and nods at me. There are two other nuns. Sister Cicilia and Mary. Sister Mary glares at me. She’s still upset because I threw up on her infirmary when I was first admitted here. 

I fall into line in between Mercy and Prayer. Mercy has gotten so big. She’s at the end of her term, so her baby could be arriving any day now. She doesn’t seem to be nervous about it like how the other girls usually get, but rather, excited. Yesterday she told me something along the lines of “I can’t wait until the damn thing is out so I can go back home and pretend like none of this shit ever happened”. 

    I can feel Prayer staring at me through the corner of her eye as we walk towards the dining hall. I know she wants to tell me something, but couldn’t just yet. I glance over at her, to let her know that I know, but she isn’t catching on. Prayer is different. She keeps herself neater than the other girls. Her fair-colored hair is always in a tight bun. Her garments are always clean, and I’ve never heard her raise her voice at anybody. She’s the tallest girl out of anyone here, and the most obedient. 

    The dinner hall is small. There is a giant wooden cross at the end of the room. There is bread and butter on the table, along with a mysterious soup. We all take our seats and Sister Mary leads us into saying grace. 

    There’s something about Sister Mary’s gnarled old hands and her skinny, pointy nose that reminds me of a witch. She has beady eyes too, eyes that could see everything. I know that she hates every one of us. I know that she thinks of us as beneath her. Some days, it makes my skin crawl. 

    “Lord, we ask you to bless our food and water. We thank you for this meal, for its plentiful nutrients that enrich our bodies. We thank you in Jesus’s name, Amen.”

    The word Amen tumbled out of everyone’s lips as we begin to eat. I lift a spoonful of the soup to my lips. It smells bad. I remembered how Mercy once told me that she thinks that the nuns slip things into our food. Bad things. 

    “Psst, Atonement,” Mercy whispers from my left. She had grabbed a pea from her soup and has it pinched between her thumb and index finger. She nods over to Sister Mary, who is in a deep conversation with Sister Cicilia. “Think I should throw this at her great big head?”

    Holding back my giggles, I shake my head. Prayer overheard what Mercy was saying and frowns deeply.

    “Honestly, you two,” she says, chewing slowly on a piece of bread. “You’re just begging for a beating.”

    I turn to Prayer and speak quietly. I learned that you need to barely move your lips when you speak, so the nuns don’t think you’re saying anything. “Did you want to tell me something?” 

    “No. What gave you that idea?”

    I shrug and look back at my soup. “Nothing. I just thought you had something to say.”

    “I think you’ve been imagining things lately, Atonement. And nothing good comes from an overactive imagination.” 

    I look up from my soup, up at the brick walls and the purple and yellow stained glass windows that give everything in the room a sickly glow. Some red light from the windows settled on the top of Sister Mary’s head, making it look like she’s silently burning alive. I watch a spider crawl up the side of the giant wooden cross at the back of the room. 

    “My imagination is all I have left.” I say quietly. 

      ***

    Bedtime used to scare me when I first came here. There’s no light in any of the rooms, except for a meager amount of moonlight that bled into the room. The nuns don’t even allow us a candle beside our beds, because in the past girls have tried to hurt themselves with the flame. 

    The first week, I didn’t cry like all the other girls did. Mercy said that when she first came here nine months ago, she was howling with tears all night and nuns had to come smack her to get her to be quiet. All I did was stare up at the ceiling as faces flashed around in my head. I saw my face, the narrow, freckled thing, and I saw my mother’s, beautiful and symmetrical. I saw my father’s face sometimes too. Sometimes he’d be smiling at me. Sometimes my mother’s face would smile at me too, but most times, she would open her lips and say something. It was always a short phrase, but I could never figure out what she was trying to say.

    Tonight, all I do is stare out the window. My room overlooks the lake that sits beside the hospital. Its surface is like a mirror. I can count the stars that wink on its surface. I want to jump out the window and bathe myself in its sparkling waters, but of course, one of the many rules the nuns have for us is that no girl can go outside at night for any reason whatsoever. Not that any of us desire to. It’s December, and the days and nights are bitterly cold. 

    I had counted eleven stars on the water when a bird appeared on my windowsill. It’s a bluebird. It looks like one of the birds that Mother would watercolor paint sometimes. Its bright blue feathers looked as if they had been gently stroked by her paintbrush. 

    “Hello there.” I whisper. I unlatch my window as slowly as I can, praying for it not to creak. I crack it open and the bird hops onto the palm of my hand. I slowly run my fingertips over its silky soft feathers. It tilts its head at me. 

    “Do you want to get out of here?”

    I quickly spin around, startled, trying to find where that voice had spoken from. But all I can see is my bed, dresser, and the bird in my hand. 

    “Do you want to get out of here?”

    It took me a moment to realize that it was the bird that had been speaking. It was sitting very, very still on my hand but I knew it was it who had spoken. Its voice sounded like the one that spoke to me in the back of my head. A sound that was wholly ubiquitous. 

    “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes. I want to get out of here.” 

    “Do you want to take the child with you?”

I frown for a moment. What child was it referring to? I certainly had no children. But all of a sudden, I remember. I glance down at my swollen stomach. At the life stirring in there. The life I forget about until the nuns ask about it, or when a nurse comes by to check on it. 

    I don’t hate the child, like Mercy hates hers. I don’t speak to it either, like I know Prayer does sometimes when she thinks nobody is watching. I’m indifferent to it. But I know that it wouldn’t be fair for me to leave it behind. Besides, what if it was beautiful like my Mother?

    “Yes.” I reply. 

    “Good. Tomorrow at midnight, meet me by the lake. If you come sooner, I won’t be there. If you come later, I won’t be there.” 

    I nod, and breathlessly, I watch as it flies out the window, its beautiful blue wings outstretched as it glides amongst the stars. It is the most elysian thing I have ever seen. 

    **

    Mercy wasn’t there at breakfast. And she isn’t here now, as we walk through the gardens. Everyone is wearing a coat and hat. My fingers are freezing. 

    “Where do you think Mercy is?” Prayer asks for the third time. Mercy’s disappearance has put her on edge. She begins to scratch her neck, long and slow as we continued to walk through the dead, snow-covered flowers. 

    “Prayer, I told you I don’t know.” I keep staring at the lake in the distance. I realize that I’m thirsting for it. 

    “But she’s been gone all morning. What if-”

    “I’m sure she’s fine.” I cut Prayer off because I’m used to her being the calm, quiet one. The tables are turned right now, and it makes me slightly uncomfortable. 

    “Do you think she’s...given birth?” Prayer’s eyes turn frantic. 

    “Prayer, for the last time-”

    I feel a smack on the back of my hand, a smack that came from a gnarled hand. I turn and see Sister Mary, a sneer creating deep lines on her face. 

    “No talking,” she hisses. “We are having a quiet walk.” 

    “Yes, Sister Mary.” Prayer and I mumble. I can see myself in Sister Mary’s black eyes, as if I’m drowning in them, an endless sea of black. She was about to say something else when we all hear echoing sobs coming from the front of the hospital. Prayer gasps. 

    It was Mercy. She’s being dragged into a car by a man I’ve never seen before. But he has the same bright red hair as Mercy. Mercy is crying, trying to wrestle herself from the man’s grip. 

    “Adelaide!” I hear him shout. “We’re going-now!”

    “B-but…” I can barely make out what Mercy’s trying to say over her tears. “The baby...they have my baby…”

    I and all the other girls watched motionlessly as Mercy was pushed into the car, and with a creak of its engine, it speeds down the driveway and became nothing but a small black dot on the horizon. 

    Tears slip down Prayer’s face. I watch as she places a protective hand over her stomach. Her lips aren’t moving but I know she’s whispering something. I look down at my stomach, imagining my child inside before returning my gaze to the lake.

    “Midnight,” I whisper to myself, my lips unmoving. “Midnight.”

***

    After dinner, I pace back and forth in my room. Dinner starts at 8pm, and ends at around 9pm. I’ve been in my room for about an hour, haven’t I? Or has it been less? More? 

    I walk to my bed and take the parchment out from under my pillow. I stare at the words. My name is Alice. What would Alice do? I searched the parchment for answers and found none. All I knew is what Atonement would do. Atonement would break the rules, and do what she could to get the hell out of here. 

    I walk to the window and push it open. I peer down cautiously, as if at any moment, I could fall down like how Alice tumbled down the rabbit hole in that book Mother used to read to me. Is that who Alice was? I look back at the parchment for a moment before smacking myself in the forehead, willing myself, pleading with myself to focus. 

    The drop doesn’t look horrible. Bedrooms aren’t kept on the second floor. But I’d be heard, and the Sisters would be after me with rage. Being eight months pregnant wouldn’t protect me from the beating I’d receive for something like this. All I would have to do was run to the lake as fast as I could muster. 

    I unlatch the window and pull it open with one quick movement. I hoist myself upwards, barely fitting through the window frame due to my stomach, and push myself down. All I feel is the coldness of the night air and then I hit the ground with a loud thud. 

    I don’t have time to feel the pain in my back and in my legs. I have to keep moving because I hear startled voices from the inside. I shakily stand and run as fast as I can towards the lake, my heart thudding in my ears. 

    When I arrive, the glassy surface of the lake was moving. Small ripples appeared and disappeared even though there’s nothing disturbing it. The bird is situated on a snowy tree branch, staring at me. 

    “You have arrived at midnight.” it says. Gratitude and relief begins to flood my entire body. Without thinking about it, I place a hand on my stomach. We’re safe now. “I can help you escape.”

    “How? Please?” I glance back at the hospital. The front doors are swung open, light spilling out into the night. 

    “You must submerge yourself completely in the water,” the bird says. “Do this until you feel you cannot breathe. And then, and only then, will you arise and find yourself back home.”

    “Yes, thank you.” I peel off my slippers, pull my nightgown over my head and try to ignore the distant shouts from the hospital. 

    I expect the water to be cold, but when I dip my feet in, it's warm and inviting, like the baths Mother used to make for me when I was young. She’d pour the warm water over my head and scrub me with soap. I pretend the glittering stars in the water are soap suds as I sink my head underneath. 

    Everything is quiet. Everything is still. It’s just me and my child. I open my eyes in the warm water and see a face in front of me, surrounded by stars. It’s my mother’s face. She opens her lips and begins to say what she was trying to say when she first made me come here. When she dragged me by my hair into the hospital as I wept, begging her to stay with me. 

    “I’m sorry.”